John Patric

In 1958, Snohomish resident and writer John Patric was involuntarily committed to Northern State Hospital for the Insane. The psychiatrists there diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic, and recommended he be locked up indefinitely. They said he was a danger to society. As permitted by Washington State law, Patric demanded—and received—a jury trial to determine the matter of his sanity. This is the story of that trial, and of John Patric.